The present invention relates to the art of inventory systems, more particularly, to an automated hardware inventory control system having remote readout.
Heretofore, the process of inventorying apparatus, such as PBX equipment located on a telephone customer's premises, required dispatching a craftsperson to the site of the equipment to physically inventory the equipment. The expense of performing an inventory in this manner is costly and several methods have been devised to reduce this cost. These methods use various coded labels appended to an exposed surface, such as a face plate, of the apparatus. The coded labels generally are of the bar coded variety which can be scanned by a craftsperson using a hand held scanning device. While these methods facilitate the inventory process, they do not eliminate the cost of dispatching a craftsperson to the site of the equipment.